Hair today, gone tomorrow
American Hair Metal documents the explosion and implosion of glam rock
Mike Warkentin

Hair metal appeared on the Sunset Strip in 1980 with a puff of cocaine, and by 1991 empty liquor bottles and piles of used condoms were all that remained of the genre.

The ’80s were indeed wild times, and it was during those heady days that bands such as Dokken, Poison, Mötley Crüe and Cinderella ruled the record world and indulged in chemical and sexual excesses unseen since the fall of Rome.

Author Steven Blush, who grew up listening to punk music and went on to write American Hardcore, stumbled across the glam genre after it had all but died, and now he’s documenting its rise and fall in a colourful new book called American Hair Metal (Feral House).

“I just found myself delving into this world, and what I discovered was this lost civilization,” Blush says. “There was like an ice age around the time of Nirvana that kind of put all these guys out of business, and these bands used to sell millions and millions of records and yet there’s not a trace of it today. It’s like the dinosaur.”

While American Hardcore was an in-depth look at a scene from the inside by a man who grew up in it, American Hair Metal is lighter fare characterized by picture after picture of preening sexual predators posing with socks packed in crotches.

“I tried at first to give hair metal a similar treatment, the really in-depth sociological discussion where people pour their hearts out, and it didn’t work,” Blush says. “None of this stood up to analysis. It was just about partying and kicking ass and being the biggest version of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll — and there’s really not much more to say.”

When he started the project Blush was also immediately frustrated by interview subjects who wouldn’t — or perhaps couldn’t — recall the wanton decadence of the ’80s.

“I interviewed guys from a couple of different bands, and I was very dissatisfied with the quality of the interviews,” Blush explains. “They were holding back. It was like they were worried about what the wife and kids might think about that story about the cocaine and the three groupies in Tampa, but that’s the story you need to tell.

“The only way I could get them in their true environment, I just got myself 300 copies of old hair magazines and I read every damn one cover-to-cover — and it was a mind-numbing experience.”

Blush’s pain is your pleasure because he unearthed a few real gems from the glossy pages of old fan mags.

Take, for example, this 1988 ‘prophecy’ delivered by Kip Winger of Winger: “I can see us over a long period of time being like Queen, Jethro Tull or Yes.”

Also included in the book is a lengthy section of band profiles, noteworthy particularly for the fact that only Bon Jovi really managed to survive the revolution that started when Nevermind hit shelves in ’91.

“Yeah, it’s true that the record companies and the industry bailed on these bands even though they made them millions of dollars...,” Blush says, “but the artists also were to blame here, too, because they did not really stay true to it.

“They tried to change with the times and, kinda like Samson, they cut their hair and they lost their power.”